Assessment of Microelastic Properties of Bone Using Scanning Acoustic Microscopy: A Face-to-Face Comparison with Nanoindentation

Abstract

International audienceThe current work aimed at comparing, on site-matched cortical bone tissue, the micron-level elastic modulus Ea derived from 200 MHz-scanning acoustic microscopy (SAM) acoustic impedance (Z) combined with bone mineral density (assessed by synchrotron radiation microcomputed tomography, SR-µCT) to nanoindentation modulus En. A good correlation was observed between En and Z (R2=0.67, p<0.0001, root mean square error RMSE=1.9 GPa). The acoustical elastic modulus Ea derived from Z showed higher values of E compared to nanoindentation moduli. We assumed that the discrepancy between Ea and En values may likely be due to the fixed assumed value of Poisson's ratio while values comprised between 0.15 and 0.45 have been reported in the literature. Despite these differences, a highly significant correlation between Ea and En was found (R2=0.66, p<0.001, RMSE=1.8 GPa) suggesting that SAM can reliably be used as a modality to quantitatively map the local variations of tissue-level bone elasticity